mley to Oxford.

There was some danger that the books at Whitehall would be destroyed in
the fury of the Civil War; but almost all of them were saved by the
personal exertions of Hugh Peters, when Selden had told him that there
was not the like of these rare monuments in Christendom, outside the
Vatican. Whitelocke was appointed their keeper, and to his deputy, John
Dury, we owe the first English treatise on library management. Thomas,
Lord Fairfax, did a similar good service at Oxford. When the city was
surrended in 1646 the first thing that the General did was to place a
guard of soldiers at the Bodleian. There was more hurt done by the
Cavaliers, said Aubrey, in the way of embezzlement and cutting the chains
off the books, than was ever done afterwards. Fairfax, he adds, was
himself a lover of learning, and had he not taken this special care the
library would have been destroyed; 'for there were ignorant senators
enough who would have been content to have it so.' As a rule, we must
admit that the Puritans were friendly to literature, with a very natural
exception as to merely ecclesiastical records. Oliver Cromwell gave some
of the Barocci MSS. to the University of Oxford; and the preservation of
Usher's library at Trinity College, Dublin, was due to the public spirit
of the Cromwellian soldiers, officers and men having subscribed alike for
its purchase 'out of emulation to a former noble action of Queen
Elizabeth's army in Ireland.'

[Illustration: SIR ROBERT COTTON.]

Sir Robert Cotton began about 1588 to gather materials for a history of
England. With the help of Camden and Sir Henry Spelman he obtained nearly
a thousand volumes of records and documents; and these he arranged under
a system, by which they are still cited, in fourteen wainscot presses
marked with the names of the twelve Caesars, Cleopatra, and Faustina. He
was so rich in State Papers that, as Fuller said, 'the fountains were
fain to fetch water from the stream,' and the secretaries and clerks of
the Council were glad in many cases to borrow back valuable originals.
Sir Robert was at one time accused of selling secrets to the Spanish
ambassador, and various excuses were found for closing the library,
until at last it was declared to be unfit for public use on account of
its political contents. He often told his friends that this tyranny had
broken his heart, and shortly before his death in 1631 he informed the
Lords of the Council that their condu